I'm talking 40-60k below market rate, with pitiful stock options to make up for it. I often wonder who would even let themselves be taken advantage of so strong

I'm talking 40-60k below market rate, with pitiful stock options to make up for it. I often wonder who would even let themselves be taken advantage of so strongly? Why would any halfway decent engineer take 65-80k with 0.25-0.5% equity? see news about $100M exits ==> 0.5% == $500k heard mention of a 10% success rate ==> $50k expected value $50k == (market_rate - salary) ==> sounds about right Which of course misses that (1) the utility of large amounts of money isn't linear (expected value doesn't work that way on single occurrences); (2) future money should be discounted by some rate; and (3) your equity will get diluted. And that the slaray difference is per year, and the equity is a one-time thing. And whatever else I missed.